Author: PORTER, William Young
Biography:
PORTER, William Young (1808-59: findagrave.com)
The identification of W. Y. P. as William Young Porter, based on a manuscript note in the York Minster Library copy of Sketches of Bandit Life, is supported by biographical details and internal evidence in the volume. He was born on 1 Mar. 1808 at Scarborough, Yorkshire, the second son of Henry (Harry) Porter, a lieutenant in the Royal Marines, and his wife Anna Maria Alfrey, who had married at Horsham, Surrey, on 26 June 1805. He was admitted pensioner to Queens’ College Cambridge on 13 Dec. 1830 and matriculated the following year but did not take a degree. He married Anne Read Sandifer, a local Cambridge girl, at St. Marylebone, Westminster, on 2 June 1831, with the consent of her recently widowed mother since she was a minor. They went on to have seven daughters and a son. Soon after the marriage he applied to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) for a post as schoolmaster in Canada, noting that "circumstances, entirely of a domestic nature, rendered it necessary to withdraw my name from the university." At some stage his wife’s mother and younger sister also went out to Nova Scotia. He was ordained in 1840 and became assistant rector at St. George’s, Sydney (Anglican), where he remained until his death. In Sydney he was responsible for the early schooling of John George Bourinot (1836-1902), later an eminent historian and parliamentarian. He also travelled widely in Cape Breton, doing missionary work. He organised the building of a church at South Head (1844-5), where he was later commemorated in a stained-glass window. He became a freemason in 1854. He drowned in the Dartmouth River on 18 Feb. 1859 (newspaper reports) or 21 Feb. (gravestone), crossing the ice in a sleigh from Sydney to North Bar. He was buried at St. George’s. His widow was left destitute with seven children and was awarded a small pension of £65. She died in Halifax on 16 Nov. 1862 and was buried there in St. John's Cemetery. (ancestry.co.uk 14 Nov. 2025; findagrave,com 14 Nov. 2025; Newcastle Courant 25 Mar. 1825; Cambridge Chronicle 12 Dec. 1846, 19 Oct. 1861; LeRoy Peach, "William Y. Porter," Cape Breton's Magazine no. 57 [1991]; ACAD; "Bourinot, Sir John George," DCB 15 Nov. 2025) AA